Info-Mac 3/Info_Mac_1994-01.iso/Development/Source/Macintosh Tracker 1.1 Source/Original Tracker 3.10 Source/docs/readmefirst

Text File | 1993-05-22 | 5.1 KB | 110 lines | [TEXT/KAHL]

Just a quick question-and-answer file.

- What is tracker, what do I need to use it ?
tracker is a soundtracker player for unix machines. You need a sparcstation
or an siligon graphics iris, or a PC with unix and soundblaster. Your machine
should be able to produce sounds, that goes without saying. You also need
tunes to play (mod files). Some are available on nic.funet.fi, for instance.
You will also want to get zoo and lha for unix machines. They should be
on nic.funet.fi or amiga.physik.unizh.ch.

- How to compile it ?
Just make machine to build it all, and make install after you've decided
where you want to put it.

- How to use it ?
tracker -help will give you a good idea of what's available.

- How does it compare with SparcTracker, or str32 ?
Well it's better... No, actually it's the same program, but the name has
changed as it was evolving.  So anything labelled SparcTracker100,
SparcTracker1.1, or sparctracker1.2 is OLD.  Don't send me any bug reports
about these older versions, this is useless.  Well, I'll try not to change
the name of the program again...

- What's new ?
from 3.9:
* linux: small bug-fix, 16 bit support
* general: bug in finetune fixed
from 3.7:
* background/foreground csh-aware mode, much cleaner termio.
from 3.6:
* support for linux (thanks to Hannu Savolainen ([e-mail])
* small bug fix in termio: restore to a sane tty on exit.
from 3.0 (never released):
* more efficient replay routine, works faster, all glitches finally suppressed
(I hope).
* more options, better integrated.
* much cleaner source code.
from 2.17:
* tracker is aware of the sparcstation 10.
* bug fix for command 5 (portamento slide), that now works like
portamento. Mostly affects apocalypse module.
* support for most protracker extended commands, including finetune.
* dynamic adjustements to the output frequency, fast skip, much better
user-response overall.
* better runtime interface (without those strange signals sequences)
* better screen output
* audio flush on the sparc, don't have to wait 10sec+ to exit.

- Which kind of modules can it play ?
MOST soundtracker/noiseplayer/protracker modules should play out ok. Due
to various disagreements between all the soundtracker versions (never forget
soundtracker is an horrible HACK, a big KLUDGE), it is a *REAL* nightmare to
try and make some commands work. What you have is my best effort at trying
to outguess every soundtracker composer in existence... Obviously, I haven't
completely succeeded. MED support I've thought of, but don't forget, to
make tracker work, I need to reverse-engineer assembly routines coded like
spaghetti, and transform it into more or less human-readable, normal C code.
So up till now, I haven't had time enough to do the same with MED. Teijo's
code is not exactly limpid, MEDplayer itself tends to change from release to
release. So maybe one day...
Here is what is missing from the protracker format
* extended commands 3/4/7/13/14

Actually, if you know other player programs, you will notice that tracker is
better at that compatibility game than most of them, like <BLIP>, <BLOP> or <ZP>
(names intentionnally omitted:-) )



- What are these weird things scrolling on my screen ?
These are some informations on the current module, like its name,
the distinct sample lengths and their names.
Oh, you mean -show ? Well, this is the tune being played. Get any protracker
doc, I think you'll understand what's going on.

- I can't change the volume of the sound.
That's intentional. There are other programs that do that quite well.
What you really want is an audio control panel. There are some nifty ones
around, just search carefully. There is no need for tracker to support variable
volume.

- There are some ``not supported'' messages from time to time.
tracker doesn't support the whole set of protracker commands, so it tells
you when it doesn't play something the way it's supposed to be played.
I don't know if I'll implement the remaining commands, as they are symptomatic
for me that the mod format is just a big kludge, and not getting any better...

- I want to use tracker on another machine.
Then you'll have to port it. You can wedge in at two levels: either replace
the audio.c file or the xxx_audio.c. The audio.c works at the amiga level:
it interprets commands to play samples and repeat parts in terms of
resampling them at the right frequency. If your machine supports four fully
independent channels (like the amiga), you shouldn't have to resample, but
instead issue the proper commands for these samples to play.
Else, you'll have to use resampling, and going through a specialized xxx_audio
file. The examples you have should be quite enough.
If you make tracker run on another machine, please send me the required changes.
Try to keep it to either the audio.c or xxx_audio.c file. If you make any
other enhancement, I might like to incorporate it in a further release, but
that part of the code may have evolved beyond control in between. xxx_audio
files I can grope !

- How do I know which version I have ?
Look at the version strings embedded in the various source files, and into
the program itself. The highest one is the winner (usually the one from
main.c).

    Marc Espie